Donald Trump refuses to answer election questions as he announces COVID vaccine rollout
Donald Trump has touched on the end of his administration despite refusing to answer questions about his election result dispute, and a ballot count win.
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Donald Trump has made his first public comments since Joe Biden was declared US president-elect following the general election, in a press conference in the White House Rose Garden.
Mr Trump praised his administration’s efforts to fight COVID-19 via its Operation Warp Speed, in a press conference called to update the American public on the pandemic. A vaccine would be available by December, he said.
“The vaccine will be provided free of charge, we will work to secure emergency use authoriations and it will be approved very quickly,” Mr Trump said.
“Operation Warp Speed is unequalled and unrivalled anywhere else in the world.
“This far exceeds any and all expectations. Our investment will make it possible for the vaccine to be provided by Pfizer free of charge.”
The most vulnerable sections of society will be the first to receive the vaccine.
“The end of this pandemic will allow seniors to reclaim their golden years,” Mr Trump said.
The vaccine will be available to the entire US population by April, except for New York City, where Mr Trump claimed Governor Andrew Cuomo had blocked authorisation.
“For political reasons, the governor decided to say – I don’t think it’s good politically – he wants to take his time with a vaccine, he doesn’t trust where the vaccine is coming from,” Mr Trump said.
“We won’t be delivering it to New York until we have authorisation to do so, and it pains me to say that.”
Mr Trump did not take questions from the media and did not address the result of the election which he has repeatedly disputed and against which he has launched legal action in several states.
Reporters shouted a number of questions about the election to Mr Trump as he wrapped up the press conference but he turned his back on them and retreated back into the White House.
However Trump did touch on the election result when he spoke about the chance of more coronavirus lockdowns.
“I will not be going to a lockdown. Hopefully the, the ah – whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration it will be, I guess time will tell – but I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown,” Mr Trump said.
Two of the big US TV networks have now called Georgia for Mr Biden, strengthening his hold on the White House.
However Mr Trump has enjoyed a win of his own with the Associated Press reporting the Republican has won North Carolina and its 15 electoral votes.
COVID TEARS THROUGH SECRET SERVICE
More than 130 Secret Service agents assigned to protect the White House or Mr Trump are isolating after they tested positive for the coronavirus or had contact with an infected colleague, according to a new report.
The outbreak has been linked to the slew of rallies that Mr Trump did in the weeks before the November 3 presidential election and has sidelined approximately 10 per cent of the agency’s core security team, reports the New York Post.
It comes as the West Wing and Trump 2020 campaign also deal with growing clusters that have recently sidelined chief of staff Mark Meadows, HUD Secretary Ben Carson and senior campaign adviser Corey Lewandowski.
It is the latest blow for Mr Trump’s outgoing administration which has been hit by a tidal wave of positive tests.
Mr Trump kept up a punishing campaign schedule in the final weeks before the election on November 3, holding close to 50 campaign rallies in battleground states.
Mr Trump, himself, recovered from coronavirus in mid-October. Many of the US states he travelled to are also COVID-19 hot spots, where large crowds were consistently tightly packed and few supporters wore masks.
In addition to the Secret Service officers that travelled with Mr Trump to each rally, dozens are present on the ground, many arriving days in advance.
Mr Biden, conversely, kept his appearances to a minimum and consistently wore a mask.
After being admitted to the Walter Reed Medical Centre as doctors treated him for coronavirus, Mr Trump came under fire for going on a “drive by” to wave to supporters waiting outside of the hospital, saying the very act of being in a confined space put his Secret Service agents at risk.
It’s the latest in a string of positive COVID-19 results in Mr Trump’s White House.
On Thursday it was revealed that Corey Lewandowski, a senior advisor to Mr Trump’s campaign who has been involved in the legal efforts to challenge the election results, also tested positive for coronavirus.
The New York Times said Mr Lewandowski is one of at least five people who have tested positive for coronavirus after attending a November 3 election night party at the White House.
The others are Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Mr Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, adviser David Bossie and White House political director Brian Jack.
Mr Lewandowski told CNN, however, that he may have contracted the virus while in Philadelphia, where he has been mounting legal challenges to President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
Mr Trump was briefly hospitalised with the virus in early October and his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, and their son Barron also came down with COVID-19.
The United States has recorded more than 242,000 deaths from COVID-19 and more than 10.4 million people have been infected.
TRUMP EMERGES FROM ELECTION GLOOM
Meanwhile, Mr Trump, who has largely vanished from public view since his election defeat, emerged on Friday for a White House meeting on the COVID-19 vaccine drive.
For 10 days the Republican has been consumed by his pursuit of a conspiracy theory that Democrat Joe Biden won through massive ballot rigging.
Despite his own intelligence officials’ declaration that the November 3 election was “the most secure in American history,” Mr Trump and his right-wing media allies show no sign of giving up their crusade.
“Biden did not win, he lost by a lot!” Mr Trump asserted falsely again late on Thursday (local time) while tweeting commentary on the Fox News evening show starring his booster Sean Hannity.
Mr Trump has been tweeting day and often night on the unproven fraud claims. But he has been absent from his normal presidential duties and notably silent about dramatically soaring coronavirus infection rates around the country and steadily rising deaths.
Friday’s midday (4am AEDT) work session was marked as an “update” on Operation Warp Speed, the government partnership with pharmaceutical companies to create and distribute a vaccine.
The closed meeting marked a rare change in the president’s public daily schedule which has mostly been empty since the election.
He has gone more than a week now without speaking in public or taking questions from journalists.
‘SPLIT REALITY’
Mr Trump and his senior aides are living increasingly in a split reality. Despite a healthy majority of ballots tallied for Mr Biden and days of failed attempts by Mr Trump’s lawyers to present proof of significant irregularities, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro told Fox Business on Friday (local time) that his side remained convinced of victory.
“We think he won that election,” he said. “We are moving forward here at the White House under the assumption that there will be a second Trump term.”
Mr Biden, meanwhile, is steadily preparing to take over on January 20 and the list of world leaders accepting that he will be the new president keeps lengthening.
China was the latest nation on board, with a foreign ministry spokesman saying “we express our congratulations.”
However, Mr Biden’s newly appointed chief of staff, Ron Klain, told MSNBC in the US that moves by Mr Trump to block the incoming administration from access to confidential government briefings posed a growing risk.
Mr Klain highlighted the inability to join in on preparations for rolling out the COVID vaccine in “February and March when Joe Biden will be president.”
“The sooner we can get our transition experts into meetings with the folks who are planning the vaccination campaign the more seamless,” he said.
Top Republicans remain outwardly loyal to Mr Trump, but there appears to be widening discomfort within the party over the blocking of Mr Biden’s transition team.
Senator James Lankford told a Tulsa radio station earlier this week that he was giving Mr Trump until Friday to allow Mr Biden access to the daily presidential intelligence briefing or “I will step in.”
John Bolton, a former national security adviser under Mr Trump and a popular figure on the hawkish foreign policy wing of the Republican Party, said his side has to “acknowledge the reality that Biden is the president-elect.”
“They may not like it but the country deserves to give him the preparation he needs,” he told NPR radio in the US on Friday (local time).
Since the election, Mr Trump has only left the White House to play golf twice and to attend a brief Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.
POPE CALLS JOE BIDEN
The Pope has spoken to Mr Biden to congratulate him on his US election win.
In a statement, the Biden transition team said, “President-elect Joe Biden spoke this morning with His Holiness Pope Francis. The president-elect thanked His Holiness for extending blessings and congratulations and noted his appreciation for His Holiness’ leadership in promoting peace, reconciliation, and the common bonds of humanity around the world.”
Mr Biden will be America’s second Catholic president, behind John F Kennedy who was in office from 1961 until his assassination in 1963.
Mr Biden “expressed his desire to work together on the basis of a shared belief in the dignity and equality of all humankind on issues such as caring for the marginalised and the poor, addressing the crisis of climate change, and welcoming and integrating immigrants and refugees into our communities”, the statement said.
REPUBLICANS ‘POISONING’ DEMOCRACY
Mr Trump was again active on Twitter on Thursday (local time), questioning the validity of the election result while also retweeing a statement from a supporter that suggested a vote recount in the Georgia should instead be a “vote audit”.
“100 per cent correct!” Mr Trump tweeted.
But the US Senate’s top Democrat warned his Republican colleagues that they were “poisoning” the country’s democracy by continuing to refuse to acknowledge Mr Biden’s presidential election victory last week.
Only a handful of Republicans have publicly congratulated Mr Biden — who himself served for decades in the Senate — an awkward break with political tradition that has heightened the sense of polarisation in Washington.
Several Republican politicians including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have stood firm with Mr Trump by supporting his refusal to concede the election and backing the flood of legal challenges that the party has introduced following the vote.
“We just had a divisive and hard-fought presidential election,” a clearly frustrated Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters.
“But instead of working to pull the country back together so that we can fight our common enemy COVID-19, Republicans in Congress are spreading conspiracy theories, denying reality and poisoning the well of our democracy.”
Instead of following political norms and extolling America’s ongoing tradition of a peaceful transition of power, Republicans who have no evidence of significant electoral fraud are “denying reality” and “auditioning for profiles in cowardice,” Mr Schumer went on.
“Congressional Republicans are deliberately casting doubt on our elections for no other reason but fear of Donald Trump,” he added, even after every major US media outlet called the race in Mr Biden’s favour.
Political experts have said Republicans may be invoking such a strategy as a way to rile up Mr Trump’s political base ahead of two key run-off elections for US Senate seats in Georgia that will determine which party controls the chamber going forward.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Mr Trump’s top Democratic nemesis in Congress, also weighed in to call on Republicans to stop their “absurd circus” and focus their attention on combating the pandemic and not Mr Biden’s election victory.
“Now that the people have expressed their views, Joe Biden has won (and) Kamala Harris will be the first woman vice president of the United States,” Mrs Pelosi said.
WORLD LEADERS CONGRATULATE BIDEN
On Thursday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison joined a chorus of world leaders congratulating Mr Biden as Donald Trump continued to fight the presidential election result.
“I’ve just spoken to President-elect @JoeBiden to congratulate him on his election. There are no greater friends and no greater allies than Australia and the US,” Mr Morrison said on Twitter.
Later, the Prime Minister revealed he had personally invited Mr Biden to visit Australia next year to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the 70th relationship.
The Australian/US relationship had been stewarded “by many prime ministers, by many presidents, from many perspectives,” Mr Morrison said, but it was “bigger than both of us”.
The alliance was important “not just here in Australia and in the United States, but in our own region and more broadly, around the rest of the world, and we understand those responsibilities,” Mr Morrison said.
The leaders of France, Germany, Canada, Ireland, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have also spoken to Mr Biden since last week’s election.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson drove home his support for Mr Biden by referring to Mr Trump as the “former president” in parliament.
Despite Mr Biden’s lead in the electoral college exceeding five million votes, Team Trump continues to lodge legal challenges to the count.
While he appeared in public on Wednesday local time for the first time since the election was called in Mr Biden’s favour over the weekend, Mr Trump did not issue any public statements.
He was on Wednesday local time declared winner in Alaska and was reportedly buoyed by the announcement of a vote audit and hand recount in the tight state of Georgia.
Mr Trump and First Lady Melania Trump joined Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen Pence at a solemn Veteran’s Day commemoration at Arlington Cemetery.
In a statement, Mr Trump paid tribute to those who had died for the US.
“On Veterans Day, we pause to pay tribute to all who have proudly worn our Nation’s uniform. These Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen selflessly placed lives, well‑being, and security of others before their own,” the statement said.
“We enjoy the privileges of peace, prosperity, and freedom because of our veterans, and we are forever indebted to them beyond measure.”
With COVID-19 cases shattering records across the country – a million new cases were diagnosed over the past 10 days – and states imposing new restrictions in a push to contain the virus before winter arrives, Mr Trump seems to have all but shelved normal presidential duties.
Instead he has remained shut up inside the presidential mansion, pushing an alternate reality that he is about to win and filing lawsuits alleging voter fraud that so far have been backed up by only the flimsiest evidence.
Claiming that a poll in Wisconsin on Election Day had resulted in “possibly illegal suppression” he said he was “now preparing to win the state,” which was called for Mr Biden one week ago.
“Many such ‘deplorable’ instances!” he added on Twitter.
Some Republicans were adding their voices to growing calls for the president to concede, with experts warning his refusal to do so was undermining the democratic process and holding up the transition to Mr Biden, who takes office in January.
Among them was Republican secretary of state for Montana, Corey Stapleton, who heralded the “incredible things” Mr Trump accomplished in office.
“But that time is now over. Tip your hat, bite your lip, and congratulate @JoeBiden,” he tweeted.
Mr Biden is reportedly close to naming senior staff and appointments to his transition team by the end of the week.
Klain was named Chief of Staff while avowed socialist Bernie Sanders was touting himself for the Labour Secretary role.
“If I had a portfolio that allowed me to stand up and fight for working families, would I do it? Yes, I would,” Mr Sanders said on CNN.
“I want to do everything I can to protect the working families of this country who are under tremendous duress right now and whether that is in the senate or in the Biden administration, who knows. Let’s see how that unfolds.”
Mr Biden on Wednesday local time attended an event at a Korean War memorial in Philadelphia and released a statement in which he noted the debt owed to the armed forces. The nation’s “one truly sacred obligation” was “to prepare and equip our troops we send into harm’s way, and to care for them and their families when they return home,” he said.
– with AFP
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